Camí de cançons (de Ponts a Tiurana) for piano

Josep Lluís Guzmán was an expert in and a disseminator of our country’s rich heritage. With deep roots in this land – from his native Sabadell, passing through Cervera to the town of Ponts, where he taught for a number of years – he extensively studied the Obra del Cançoner Popular de Catalunya (Catalan folk songs), a hugely important ethnomusicological project that served to preserve and compile a large body of orally conveyed music.

The origin of Camí de Cançons derives directly from the research into this Cançoner. In particular, it includes some of the songs compiled in the summer of 1929 by Joan Tomàs and Joan Amades in the town of Ponts and the now defunct village of Tiurana.

Far removed from grandiloquence and clearly eschewing the avant-garde, Josep Lluís Guzman bestows us with an exquisite balance between the purest essence of the classical style and a more harmonically advanced language, borne out of the experimentation and research undertaken by an authentic musical poet.

With unwavering respect for the popular Catalan origin of these pieces, Josep Lluis Guzmán succeeds in providing an intimate version of them, using language encompassing the classical-romantic through to the intimacy of Frederic Mompou, embracing particular and more punctual sonorities, which may denote a certain influence of Impressionism to us.

Excerpt from the presentation by Santi Riu, pianist and music critic.